Anecdotally; there were a slew of men killing their wives/girlfriends in my city, about one a week for over two months. There was a two week period where three women were shot by their exes or SOs in broad daylight in public - witnesses galore. You have to stop and wonder if at least one or a couple of those men didn't see the reports of one of the cases and thinks to himself: Yeah, I hate my wife/estranged wife/girlfriend too; sounds like a good idea

It's not that hearing about violent crime makes all of us slightly more likely to commit one, it's that a small minority are substantially more likely. The numbers can be equally well explained by either hypothesis, but the second is far more plausible. I am not more likely to commit a violent crime, and neither are the vast majority of people.

Sticky Hands:yeah, IDK about that... all we hear about on the news here in the US is violent crime, people think it's worse than it's ever been, yet the actual rates are down to those of the early 60s....

Perhaps there are two (or more) things at play here. Maybe it does encourage copy cats, but also encourages folks to be more careful, and the later more than offsets the former.

I suspect that this fellow doesn't care about the crime rate at all, and just has some connections that are worried about tourist money of some kind or another.

I blame fictional TV shows just as much as the news. People get an inflated sense of numbers (and a really skewed idea of how police, forensics, and the court system work). If as many people died each year in New York City as we show in movies and TV shows, we'd have depopulated the city by now.

/space aliens in Galaxy Quest probably wondering why oh why do we keep rebuilding New York, we seem to blow it up, set it on fire, and crush it in giant waves of cold every few months.

There is some research which shows that if people hear that others 'commonly" do something they will be more likely to do the same. The one I remember is about a nature preserve where there are a lot of fossilised trees. A sign explaining to people that they shouldn't take pieces with them because it would deplete the forest actually increased the amount of fossilised tree that was taken as compared to no sign at all. So yeah, hearing that something is relatively widespread might actually increase the incidence rate.